Paris Aside
by Libby Cat
Summary: The Doctor and Romana II have entered into a more romantic relationship. This is just a quick look at a mild panic she has while beginning to cope with the new situation.


_**- I just noticed this is the first Doctor Who story I have posted here! That is amazing and absurd because writing Doctor Who was how I started in fanfiction nearly 10 years ago...so now I feel old and a little bit cheated :( -**_

**So I wrote this a fair while ago and have just rediscovered it... Hence, I am throwing caution to the wind and posting it here. **

**I do not own Romana or any of the Doctor Who concepts in this story but I do own her emotions. They were mine in the first few weeks of my first relationship. I needed a way to sort out everything in my head and so this was born. I was 19 and he was 23, it was my first year at university. I know you all probably don't care but I felt the need to share/explain. **

**The title is because it kind of runs alongside another fic I had written about 6 months previously. That story still remains unfinished on paper and as a result is unpublished. I go back and poke at it sometimes so one day it may appear too. It's called Paris in Three Parts and I really love it which is why I mentioned it. **

**Anyway, I am sure you didn't click on this story just to read my mostly pointless chatter. So, here is the story. If you like it or even dislike it, it would make my day if you reviewed... **

**Enjoy! **

**Paris Aside**

She thought she had been doing well, considering. Really she did. She took everything as it came. Anticipated almost every step before it even happened. She was well read. She studied. She knew how this was supposed to go. She thought she was prepared. And for the most part she was.

The only problem was, it wasn't going how it should go from her side. Everything he did she was prepared for. She knew how to respond; how he wanted her to respond; how he needed her to respond, and she did, because that's what he needed.

It wasn't that she didn't feel anything at all for him. She did. She definitely did. But it was all so new to her. She knew she loved the way it felt when he held her. She knew that warm, fuzzy, excited feeling when he made here feel wanted or did something particularly sweet. He was funny, he was considerate, he was her friend. Her really close friend. She let him in. That in itself was an achievement.

There was no doubt that she cared for him, but almost from the start she felt he cared for her more and it scared her. Perhaps it was her fear of that depth of feeling that stopped her feeling as much or as deeply for him. Or maybe it was just that, right now she was actually unable to. She wasn't sure which scared her more.

Time lords on Gallifrey didn't, as a rule, fall in love. Hell, close friends among their people was reasonably rare. Perhaps she was just too young to feel the way he did; too fresh out of the Academy and that society.

She had hoped that over time she would grow, those feelings would grow and she would be able to be finally on an equal footing with him. She figured that by just letting him lead she could learn from his example as she had done in just about everything since leaving home and everything she'd even known. Funnily enough, it had even worked up to a point.

There were times she felt absolutely awful because she knew how much he cared for her and how much it would hurt him if he found out she didn't feel the same. She had followed, just as she'd set out to do, and she'd found out that she really wasn't all that bad at this. Occasionally though, in order not to hurt him, she said some things or did some things that she didn't exactly mean, that may have lead him to believe she felt as he did.

She truly did it so as not to let him down, not to hurt him. She intended to grow into meaning them. She really did. She was working on it.

Only at the time they weren't exactly true to the highest degree of truth. And it hurt her. She felt awful. It felt like she was intentionally deceiving him. She wasn't trying to. It just happened because she cared about him enough to want to give him what he needed, what she was working towards feeling-even if it meant letting him believe she felt something that was still a way off, that she didn't even know she was capable of, in preference to hurting him.

It was honestly working fine. She didn't feel like she was acting most of the time. They were fine.

Then he told her he loved her and she knew he actually meant it. She had known for a while that was how deep his feelings went but she thought she still had a little time up her sleeve before he actually told her. Turns out she was wrong. And she was unprepared. So she fell on her default position in situations like this. Copy.

It was the stupidest thing she had done thus far. She said she loved him too. The smile on his face was worth it at the time but as soon as she viably excused herself from his company a few minutes later she felt like the worst person in the whole universe. Why in the name of space and time had she said that? Once it was out it was unable to be recalled. The hurt that would cause...she shuddered to think. This time it wasn't even an embellishment of the truth, not really, like all her others but an almost outright lie.

She was certain, at this moment, she did not love him the way he loved her, the way he wanted, no needed, her to love him and she wasn't even sure that any time in the next century she could.

Not long after that Romana fell into her own bed, alone and afraid, feeling worse than she had probably ever felt in both her lives.

** I don't usually write this sort of thing for Romana. I feel a bit sorry for putting her through this actually, but I do think it is plausible. Needless to say the relationship I was in didn't go all that well. Romana's however, **_**will**_** improve. **

** In my head, this follows the timeline of the show and is probably part of the reason she left to stay in E-space. I also firmly believe that she gets over it and manages to have a much better relationship with the Eighth Doctor. **

**Thank you for reading!**


End file.
